3.1 billion U.S. dollars. That’s how much Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is worth. His titles include, but aren’t limited to, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and physicist. As of this week, Milner, Stephen Hawking (who needs no introduction) and Mark Zuckerberg (ditto) banded together to fulfill a dream of the entire human race: to travel among the stars.
‘Breakthrough Starshot,’ the $100 million research project and engineering feat, will create probes that travel at light speed to record the same amount of information from our universe in one day, that we currently can obtain in one year. Powered by ultra-light beams, these butterfly-like vessels will capture images, take in data, and process fundamental intelligence that is currently not accessible.
Trying to find a habitable planet is easier said than done – mainly because habitable for humans means something quite different from a place for microscopic bacteria to live. Our planetary real estate is quite limited, but Starshot hopes to change that. It will provide us with necessary details of places like Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which has an ocean residing underneath its icy surface. Each probe will not only take photos, but they will collect samples; they essentially do everything that slow, expensive, and nonexpendable NASA crafts haven’t been able to accomplish.
This is revolutionary in the life sciences; ask any engineer, physicist, or astronomer. But this is also pioneering space travel for all mankind. If completed successfully over the next few decades, we may be able to make science fiction real. With intellectuals like these spearheading, the aliens won’t be able to hide much longer.
